Dorsey, and they could not be found?-A. One of them could not be found. The others that were on the road were found. By Mr. STEWART: Q. Has there ever been a United States expedition to discover those post-offices? [Laughter.]-A. Well, they sent a post-office inspector out there to look for them. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. Were the petitions that are mentioned in this brief from Saint Louis, and from members of Congress, and from Army officers, put before the grand jury?-A. Yes, sir. Well, I remember that there were Saint Louis petitions and a good many petitions of one sort and another. Whatever there were, were presented to the grand jury, and I remember that they were quite numerous. Q. Was Mr. Woodward called before the grand jury in reference to this route?-A. I don't remember. There was nothing that Mr. Woodward could testify to upon that route as of his own knowledge. He could merely have brought the papers, but whether he did bring the papers, as the officer in charge of the files, to prove that they were from the files, or whether they were brought by some other clerk, I do not now remember. Q. Do you remember whether Mr. Woodward testified at all in the cace?-A. My impression would be that he did not. It does not now occur to me what evidence he could have given in that case. Q. Can you name the witnesses who did appear to testify in this case before the grand jury?—A. No, sir; I cannot. Q. Can you state the name of any witnesses who appeared before the grand jury when this case was being considered to testify with reference to the route from Vinita to Las Vegas?-A. I cannot. I presume the minutes of the grand jury will show. By Mr. FYAN: Q. Did the grand jury keep minutes ?-A. I suppose so. Q. Do you know?-A. I do not. I can undoubtedly ascertain some of the names by the marshal's accounts showing the payment of witness fees. Those accounts would show the places the witnesses came from That is the only way I know that I could recall the names. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. You cannot now remember the name of any witness who appeared before the grand jury to testify in regard to this route ?-A. I cannot recall any name at all. Q. Do you know how long the grand jury were considering this case and the papers in it?-A. No, sir; I cannot tell you that. The way it was done before the grand jury was this: We took up a route-for instance, that route; the papers were proved and the witnesses were examined. Sometimes the witnesses were examined before all the papers had been gone through, or when we came to a paper which related to a matter as to which there was a witness waiting in the outer room, he was called in; and we went through the route in that way. Then another ronte was taken up and dealt with in the same way, and then another route, and so on. I think that particular grand jury, after they had got through the evidence in all of the cases that I placed before them, took them up and considered them together; at any rate I received these notices of their action all at the same time. Q. Do you know whether the minutes of the proceedings of the grand jury were kept?-A. I do not. Q. If there was any failure to keep minutes, whose fault would that be-A. The grand jury's. Q. The fault of the foreman ?—A. I cannot tell you that. I don't know whether the grand jury elected a clerk or not. I know that several of the grand juries that I went before had clerks who were apparently keeping minutes, and while I do not identify this particular grand jury as to that point, my impression is that they did keep minutes, though I never saw the minutes. Q. Then you do not know whether minutes were being kept at the time you were present?—A. I do not know as to this particular grand jury, but I do recall the case of a grand jury in which at some time while I was present I did see minutes being kept. By Mr. FYAN: Q. You say that if you could see the marshal's account of the payments made to witnesses you would then know the names of the witnesses who were examined in this case.-A. The account would remind me of the witnesses. Q. Would it enable you to say whether they were before the grand jury?-A. Yes, sir; because no man was paid by the marshal except upon my certificate that he was before the grand jury. Q. Suppose a witness came here and was not examined, would you refuse to pay him?-A. I was in the habit of stating in the certificate of such a witness that he had been summoned to attend but was not examined. Q. Did you make memoranda of that in those cases?—A. I usually wrote it on the notice to the marshal, but I am very sure that on the Vinita and Las Vegas route no witness was paid whom I did not call before the grand jury. By Mr. STEWART: Q. Do you know why that grand jury ignored this bill?—A. No, sir; I have not the remotest idea of the reason. Q. Was any statement made by any of the grand jurors to you as to the sufficiency of the evidence?-A. No, sir; there was not. Q. Was there any call upon you for additional proof?-A. No, sir. The grand jury had taken their action, and I did not feel that I had any right to remonstrate with them. I do remember saying to some member of the grand jury, I don't remember whether it was the foreman or not, that I was a good deal surprised at their action, and he replied, "Well, we tried to do right." By the CHAIRMAN: Q. Did you not regard this route from Vinita to Las Vegas as one of the most fraudulent of all the routes?-A. I regarded it, if we could get at the bottom of all the facts, as likely to develop quite as much fraud as any route that we had; but I regarded the investigation on that route as having been by no means so complete as the investigations of other routes. The post-office inspectors had started out there to go over the route, but it had been broken up by advancing railroads, and many of the witnesses were Mexicans-a floating population that had gone off and disappeared, and the inspectors had not had time to look them up. At my instigation there was a subsequent investigation made, which I understand brought in all the missing evidence. Q. Was there not evidence sufficient to show that the expedited serv ice on that route was not performed ?-A. I do not recall the evidence absolutely. My own impression is that there was enough evidence in the papers to satisfy anybody morally that the service was not performed; but whether it was so stated squarely, as a matter of evidence, I have some doubt. I think that was one of the points as to which missing witnesses were desired. By Mr. FYAN: Q. Was Mr. Crowley employed by any of these men who anticipated being indicted?-A. I never knew of his being employed. Q. You never had any conversation with him to that effect?-A. No, sir; never about his being employed. Q. Or about the propriety of his being employed?-A. No, sir. The only conversation with him relating to the matter that I remember is this: On one occasion he said that Colonel Ingersoll wanted to see me about something in connection with this arbitration business. Colonel Ingersoll had called me a liar in court, aud I said to Mr. Crowley that I did not see any public exigency that required me to have a personal interview with Mr. Ingersoll, and I had none. Q. That is not the point of my question. My question is whether Mr. Crowley ever consulted you as to the propriety of his taking a fee from any of these defendants?-A. No, sir; not that I recall. I do not see why he should have done so, and I don't think he ever did. If he did I do not recall it. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. Were any indictments prepared by you to cover the Vinita and Las Vegas route?-A. No, sir. The indictments at that time were be ing prepared by Mr. Ker, and my recollection would be that drafts of those indictments had been prepared by him. I am very confident that that was so, because we were working against the statute of limitations, and if the grand jury found bills we expected to get them right in. Q. Was this grand jury that considered the cases of the Parker-Salisbury routes in session pending the first or the last trial of the DorseyBrady case?-A. Oh, it was prior to the last trial. This was in June, 1882. Now, whether the first trial of the Dorsey case had then commenced or not, I am not able to say. I think it had not absolutely commenced, but it commenced very soon afterwards, I think. I think the first trial of the Dorsey case began about the 20th of June, and I think these transactions were about the 14th of June. That is my recollection. Q. You have stated that the return of these briefs to you with the indorsement that the cases were dismissed was a surprise to you, and that in fact you were pretty "sick."-A. Yes, sir; that is a fact. Q. Please state now what caused that surprise.-A. Simply because I thought we had made a case that would secure indictments in all the cases we had placed before the grand jury except on the Soledad and Newhall route, where the order turned out to have been made by Mr. French, and upon that case we felt that we had broken down. Q. Did you make any efforts to have these cases considered by any other grand jury?-A. No, sir. Q. Has the statute of limitations run as to the Parkers and Salisburys in reference to those routes?-A. According to my view, it has not. July 6, 1879, this route was increased and $86,000 was allowed. Now, if you take that order made on the 6th of July, 1879, as the overt act from which your statute of limitations is to be calculated, of course it would have expired on the 6th of July, 1882; but, as I have always regarded the matter, if a fraudulent order was made by Mr. Brady in 1879, and quarter after quarter the contractors went on taking their pay under that fraudulent order, each time they took their money there was a new overt act and the running of the statute ought to be calculated from that. Now, as to what time they did take their last quarter's pay on that route I cannot say, and therefore I can't say absolutely whether the statute of limitations has now run or not. Q. Has the court decided that question about the running of the statute-A. No, sir; we always avoided it. We never presented that question because we always succeeded in every cas we brought into court in presenting an order less than three years old, upon which, as the overt act, the indictment was found. Q. Were there any sessions of the grand jury subsequent to the one at which these cases were dismissed?—A. Not of that grand jury. Q. Was there any subsequent grand jury by which indictments could have been found against these parties?-A. Oh, yes; if you had had the proper evidence and the witnesses to put before them. Q. Did you make any effort to have these parties indicted by any subsequent grand jury?-A. I did not. Q. Did any of the other Government counsel ?-A. I think not. Q. Do you attribute the failure to indict these parties by the grand jury, of which Mr. John T. Mitchell was foreman, to the want of sufficient evidence, or to the incompetency or other fault of the grand jury? -A. I did not consider that the grand jury was incompetent, because, if I recollect right, in the first place, that grand jury did find an indictment on the Corpus Christi route, and in the second place, I think that same grand jury found the second Dorsey indictment, which we tried. My feeling therefore was that that grand jury was not incompetent. I saw nothing to indicate that it was so. The foreman was certainly very competent as I recollect, and the jurors were gentlemen quite up to the average of intelligence. For that reason, and also because they found indictments in the Dorsey case and in the Corpus Christi cases, I felt that I had no right to say that they were not competent or that they were not acting intelligently or weighing evidence, and while the evidence conveyed to my mind a different conclusion from that which they reached, I did not feel at liberty to find any public fault with them. Q. You have been district attorney in New York for many years ?A. For four years. Q. During that time you had a great deal of experience, I presume, in bringing cases before grand juries ?—A. Yes, sir. Q. It does not require as much evidence to find an indictment as to secure a conviction?-A. Nothing like as much. Q. A merely ex parte case is sufficient?-A. Yes. Q. Can you, then, account for the fact that with this absolutely conclusive evidence before them that grand jury failed to find an indictment in these cases?-A. I cannot account for it any more than I can account for the failure of the jury in the Dorsey case to convict. Q. That was a trial in which the other side was heard, and in which the arguments of counsel were heard and the rulings of the court; but before this grand jury you had only to present one side-it was a mere ex parte proceeding?-A. Yes, sir. Q. The other side were not present and had no opportunity to be heard by counsel, and you presented as you thought a strong and con vincing case?—A. I presented the case that is shown there in that brief, and I think it is strong and convincing. Q. For instance, a route let originally at $6,330, and increased to over $136,000, when the postmaster at Darlington, a post-office, wrote that only two papers and two letters had passed over the route, and that there was no road to Venita. With these and all the other facts in this brief placed before the grand jury, and with nobody present to dispute them, that jury failed to find an indictment. Now, can you account for that-A. I cannot, sir. The CHAIRMAN. I am sure I cannot. By Mr. FYAN: Q. What has become of the Salisbury papers relating to these routes?-A. They are undoubtedly in the files of the Post-Office Department; and as I see here there is considerable additional evidence as to this particular route. Q. Were any of the papers in these cases abstracted?-A. None that I know of. None of these papers were abstracted unless it was done after they were put before the grand jury and I have no idea that any of them have been. The combination of the safe was changed before that time. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. What you have stated about the Venita and Las Vegas route may also be said, I suppose, of the Wells and Hamilton route?-A. Yes, sir. In the Wells and Hamilton route and of the Pembina and Fargo route I considered that the evidence was far more complete. There was nothing more to be sought in order to have tried those cases. If there had been an indictment found on the Venita and Las Vegas route, before going to trial I should have endeavored to supply additional evidence, but on the Pembina and Fargo, and on the Wells and Hamilton routes I considered that the evidence was sufficient to go to trial-sufficient not only to secure indictments but to convict. By Mr. MILLIKEN: Q. Indictments were not found on those routes?-A. No, sir. By the CHAIRMAN: Q. Were those Salisbury routes?-A. They were routes that were in the names of representatives of the Salisburys, Luke Voorhees, a stage driver, and others. Mr. Woodward reminds me as to the Venita and Las Vegas route that, although an inspector had been over a portion of the route, it was not one of the routes over which inspectors had been sent specially after the star-route investigation began. An inspector had gone over a portion of that route previously, and had made a report, but it was not one of those exhaustive reports such as you find here. Such an examination was made afterwards at my request. Q. From all you know of the failure of the grand jury to indict in these case, is it your opinion, or was it then your opinion, that any undue influences had been brought to bear upon that grand jury?—A. So far as related to the Salisbury and the Parker combination, I saw no indication that any undue influences had been brought to bear upon the grand jury, because, while I watched pretty carefully, I never got anything which led me to think that the friends of the Parkers and Salisburys knew at that time that their cases were before the grand jury. I never got any indication of such knowledge on their part, and yet things are done here in Washington so publicly that I cannot see how they could |